The 31st Summer Olympic Games will take place in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, this year and its Opening Ceremony is scheduled for the evening of August 5, local time. In Japan, it will be the morning of August 6, a period which includes 8:15am, the time when the atomic bomb exploded in Hiroshima on August 6, 71 years earlier.
On May 20, Mr. Kazumi Matsui, Mayor of Hiroshima and President of Mayors for Peace, sent a letter to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro and the President of International Olympic Committee (IOC) proposing them to invite all participants at the Opening Ceremony of the Olympic Games to observe a minute of silence to remember all victims of armed conflicts and terror, and to revive the Olympic Truce, which calls for an end of violence and the establishment of a sustainable peace.
Mr Matsui, on behalf of Mayors for Peace, says to the Olympic Committee; ‘You have in your hands a great opportunity to revive the memory of the Olympic Games as an event for peace.’
Click here to read the full Letter from Mayor Matsui to the Mayor of Rio de Janeiro and the President of IOC.